| Author | Message | ||
     bettyd Citizen Username: Badjtdso Post Number: 272 Registered: 12-2005 |
July was the deadliest month in Iraq since we invaded in March 2003. Why isn't the media reporting all the good news that is coming out of there? Because there is none. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider  Post Number: 15338 Registered: 1-2003  |
"Freedom is on the march." --Our esteemed president | ||
| bettyd Citizen Username: Badjtdso Post Number: 273 Registered: 12-2005 |
"The insurgency is in its last throes."--Our esteemed vice president. | ||
| CM Townsend Citizen Username: Cm_townsend Post Number: 177 Registered: 2-2005 |
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_07_03/article.html | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 158 Registered: 5-2006  |
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/updates/aug06/iraq_fs37_081106.pdf | ||
| GOP Man Citizen Username: Headsup Post Number: 436 Registered: 5-2005  |
the good news is that 26.7 million Iraqis were not killed last month. why doesn't the liberal media report that? instead they want to carp about the people who were killed. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 159 Registered: 5-2006 |
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html | ||
| GOP Man Citizen Username: Headsup Post Number: 437 Registered: 5-2005 |
Spinal Tap, you libs are always carping. yes, according to Human Rights Watch the killing averaged less than 3,000 a month during Saddam's regime, but that doesn't mean the war wasn't worth it. if this insurgency ends sometime in the next 8 years, Saddam will still have a higher death toll. | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5540 Registered: 5-2001 |
Bush says that withdrawal from Iraq will be a decision made by future presidents (note the plural). So they may get their chance to break Saddam's record. | ||
| llama Citizen Username: Llama Post Number: 821 Registered: 5-2001  |
Gear shift. Now we are there to liberate the Iraqi people again. Each disproven reason justifies the other depending on what is convenient at the time. By the way, how come our John Q. Public doesn't have any idea what's going on in Darfur and what's being done about it??? | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 160 Registered: 5-2006 |
GOP Man - what are you talking about? I'm on your side. Read the links. Lib? You need to do a search of my other posts. | ||
| ina Citizen Username: Ina Post Number: 391 Registered: 6-2001 |
GOP Man is MOL's very own Stephen Colbert. I heart him. | ||
| GOP Man Citizen Username: Headsup Post Number: 438 Registered: 5-2005 |
my apologies Tap, a perusal of some of your other posts does indeed show that you're one of us. but in this case, I don't know if your link is helping the cause. It makes it appear that it took Saddam 25 years to all fill those mass graves, but if my math is correct, I think the insurgents are now on a pace to match him in about 10. Regardless, I think the Iraqi deaths are a price we have to be prepared to pay. I'd imagine we're together on that point at least. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 161 Registered: 5-2006 |
The first link is some of the progress in Iraq that is supposedly not happening. The second link illustrates that Iraq was a far more violent place before our arrival. We didn't make it that way. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 163 Registered: 5-2006 |
And no apologies are necessary. I would have just preferred than you wrote something about my mother than call me a lib. That kind of accusation can stay with a person. | ||
| GOP Man Citizen Username: Headsup Post Number: 439 Registered: 5-2005 |
I suppose we can agree to disagree. The info you posted suggests Iraq is just as violent as ever. But I'm in favor of the violence, because without it, there can be no peace. | ||
| Twokitties Citizen Username: Twokitties Post Number: 492 Registered: 8-2004 |
We are now at the point where even this Adminsitration accepts that our efforts in Iraq are a complete disaster. Despite this, we will "stay the course". From today's New York Times. "... outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive. “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. “Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.” So, to recap. 1) We have failed to find WMD's in Iraq, 2) we have failed to establish a stable Democracy in Iraq, 3) We have actually increased the recruiting abilities of Al Quaeda, 4) we have increased the strategic and military strength of Iran, 5) we have bled the U.S. Treasury and 6) we have done long term damage to the health of our own military. Is the the course we should stay on? | ||
| Rastro Citizen Username: Rastro Post Number: 3752 Registered: 5-2004  |
Haven't you heard? We're not "staying the course" anymore. We're "adapting to win." Or so says Ken Mehlman. In fact, it's never been about staying the course. We've always been adapting to win. Please get your talking points straight.  | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 15349 Registered: 1-2003 |
twokitties, those who make policy and those who favor the current policy will dispute and deny all of your numbered points except for number 1. So what's the point in arguing? Here are likely responses: 2. We will establish a democracy eventually. 3. Not true, and not provable. 4. No true, and not provable. 5. This is an investment that will pay off in time. 6. Just plain not true. It's better than ever. Faith is a powerful thing. Those who have faith that things are going well believe it strongly. Remember, faith is belief in the absense of evidence. And GOP Man, I love you. You get better every day. | ||
| GOP Man Citizen Username: Headsup Post Number: 440 Registered: 5-2005 |
you're one of the few good libs Tom, and I love you too. But not in a gay way. In a male bonding way, the way real American men bond. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 15353 Registered: 1-2003 |
I give you permission to love me in a gay way. | ||
| GOP Man Citizen Username: Headsup Post Number: 441 Registered: 5-2005 |
you keep that up, and you'll be on my •••• list with the rest of the libs. | ||
| Hoops Citizen Username: Hoops Post Number: 1925 Registered: 10-2004  |
I love this | ||
| notehead Supporter Username: Notehead Post Number: 3723 Registered: 5-2001  |
Spinal, did you read the American Conservative article CM posted? I'd like to know your feelings about it. Does it change in any way your opinion about what our real intentions are in Iraq? | ||
| Dave Supporter Username: Dave Post Number: 10523 Registered: 4-1997  |
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| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 168 Registered: 5-2006 |
I read it. Very interesting and unfortunately, not news to me. I am familiar with much of what he writes to one degree or another. I have to admit that the subject of the bulk of the article, the training of the Iraqi army is pretty accurate. We have not done this as effectively as we could have. The major problem, which he addresses, is the expectation that deployed forces simultaneously conduct combat operations and the training mission. Any commander, particularly a combat commander, is going to view combat and security operations as taking precedent over the training mission. An infantry battalion commander and operations officer that have rifle companies planning and engaging in combat operations is not going to put that on the back burner to see to a LT’s training of Iraqis. That also explains the lousy soldiers. If you were an S1 (battalion personnel officer) and some fat slug who couldn’t stand up in the sun for more than 15 minutes without keeling over came in, where would you assign him? To the company in combat where he could get someone killed or the one back in the rear conducting training? In spite of these problems we have still made great strides in this area. The Iraqis are fighting and taking on more responsibility as evidenced, tragically, by the casualties they are suffering that are far in excess of ours. Training an army is a massive undertaking. Training 200,000 soldiers to shoot, move, and communicate does not make an army, it makes a mob. The level of training and experience required to run operations at the battalion or brigade level are immense. U.S. officers and NCO’s on a brigade staff have hundreds of years of training and experience among them. Furthermore, the backbone of any military force, professional non-commissioned officers at the company level don’t exist in the Iraqi army - yet. Their most senior enlisted men are currently the equivalent of a private or specialist in the U.S. Army. Their most senior officers have the level of experience of a U.S. LT or Captain. Maybe we should not have disbanded the Iraqi army. Patton refused to de-Nazify, something that contributed to his eventual downfall, but his region, Bavaria, was back on its feet first. Why there are not two separate forces, one to conduct combat operations and a second to conduct training, I can’t answer. I will write that my information is that while the president keeps saying that he will send whatever resources the theater commanders ask for, unofficially, the word down the food chain is don’t ask, because you ain’t getting it. This has resulted in an unreasonably high operational tempo (another one of the LT’s topics) that has caused the overall mission to suffer and the stress on both men and equipment to exceed what I think is acceptable. A lot of other information in the article has to be viewed through the prism of military culture as well. For example, he seems to have a lot of heart burn with the Special Forces. It should be known that there is always a lot of friction, for reasons that I won’t go into here, between Special Operations Forces and conventional forces. Particularly among officers and especially in the situation he describes. One of Special Forces’ (the Green Berets - a particular type of Special Operations Force) primary missions is training foreign forces; they consider themselves experts at it going back to their founding in the 1960s. They would immediately chafe at conventional soldiers lecturing them about it, even more so if the lecture was coming from a LT. I wasn’t there in the situation he describes, I don’t know what happened, but I do know there are problems. Another problem he seems to have is with how Civil Affairs throws around money. Again, Civil Affairs is part of Army Special Operations Command and they have their way of doing things that conventional officers would find unusual. Furthermore, it should be understood that payments to Iraqis for damages and even deaths is a common occurrence and culturally acceptable. Frequently, conducting an investigation (into damage not deaths) is just not cost effective, not to mention dangerous, and it’s easier to just throw the claimants a few bucks so they go away. The logistical and personnel problems he encountered are as old as war itself. They are not unique to Iraq. There is a reason that terms like “FUBAR”, “hurry up and wait”, and “don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see” originated in the armed forces. I found the most disturbing part of the story to be when he attempted to employ the Iraqis independently and was shut down by what were probably risk averse career officers (my opinion). I remember reading a story somewhere in which some Marines were complaining that our rules of engagement were so restrictive that they were being prevented from cleaning out certain areas and that if we unleashed the Iraqis, with their fewer restrictions and more intimate knowledge of the battlefield, they would make short work of the terrorists with just the basic level of training we had given them and heavy weapons and air support. Beyond that, it has to be understood that while his story is compelling it is just the story of one LT’s experience in his slice of the war. Others report far different experiences and I would submit that even people in his own unit or area perceived events differently. The USAID information captures a much broader view of what is happening. A view that is difficult for any foot soldier to see throught the “fog of war”. I don’t agree with his final conclusion, that the whole thing is a farce designed to secure oil fields and create bases. We have bases throughout the Middle East – Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, Qatar, Djibouti, – we could have done without bases in Iraq. If oil and bases were really our goals, there were far easier ways we could have done it that would have been more palatable to the American public. | ||
| dave23 Citizen Username: Dave23 Post Number: 1961 Registered: 5-2001 |
Tap, I have to give you credit for being the only con to wade into this thread. All the others are choosing the head-in-the-sand option. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 173 Registered: 5-2006 |
The Real Body Count By Larry Schweikart FrontPageMagazine.com | August 18, 2006 How many Americans have been killed in Iraq? The media is quick to provide a number, currently at just over 2,500, and, for what it’s worth, some 500 of those have been “non-combat” fatalities (i.e., accidents). Left-wing web sites, such as the “Iraq Body Count,” (www.iraqbodycount.net), claim absurd numbers of up to 44,000 civilians killed in Iraq. One number is never reported. No one even raises it in a question: how many of the enemy have been killed since the Iraq conflict began? One might find the complete absence of this number in any discussion of the war a tad curious, since, when one side runs out of fighters, it loses. Yet the mainstream media has been reluctant to even broach this issue, let alone try to answer it. Why? An obvious answer is that if Americans knew what havoc our excellent military is wreaking on these terrorists, support for the war would be substantially higher than it already is. The left-oriented media has staged an obvious “morale” war on Americans, and to some degree it has succeeded; and it has been made worse by the refusal of the Bush Administration (thanks to the Vietnam experience) to tout any enemy casualties as indicators of progress, when in fact they are, in most cases, the very best indicators. My early estimates, based on back-of-the-envelope additions extracted from combat accounts since the war began, put the number of terrorists/“insurgents” killed at 20,000 since 2003. I was low—way low. It takes some digging, but slowly the evidence is leaking out. (Special thanks to the anonymous “S” for some numbers). The sources are USA Today, July 26, 2006, and the New York Times of June 7. Both sources cite the statistic of 3,149 “civilians” killed in June 2006. This is consistent with UN reports of 100 civilians per day killed in Iraq in June. Yet the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count put the number of “Iraqi Security Forces and Civilian Deaths” in June at 870. If there were 3,149 “civilians” killed yet only 870 of them were genuinely civilians and security forces, what were the other 2,879 bodies? Terrorists and “insurgents” perhaps? Seems likely. One of the difficulties that the UN and other “objective” observers have had is distinguishing civilians from terrorists. If the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is anywhere near accurate, however, and some 2,800 “non-civilian” bodies were in Iraq morgues in June, then in fact some 93 terrorists/“insurgents” per day were being removed from the battlefield, or, since March 2003, it means well over 100,000 non-civilians have been killed by coalition forces since the beginning of combat—perhaps upwards of 120,000. To be safe, using UN/New York Times numbers, we arrive at 75 terrorists/“insurgents” per day, or 36,000 dead enemy fighters since combat began. Americans have experienced a killed in action/wounded ratio of 13% (although an astonishing 55% of American wounded return to duty in 72 hours!) Does anyone think the terrorists are experiencing that level of medical success with their wounded? Even at eight wounded for every terrorist killed, at the low end of 36,000 enemy dead, some 288,000 have been wounded since the beginning of combat, to a high-end estimate of 960,000 wounded. This doesn’t even factor in the deserters—all the jihadists who, upon seeing their vile brethren vaporized, quietly dropped the IED and went home, never to fight again. (One indicator that this is an impressive number is the surging size of the Iraqi national army and police forces, made up to some degree of former “dead-enders” who now hope to get on the winning side). Nor does it include the more than 5,000-plus known al-Qaeda dead in Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom. How realistic are these estimates? We glean some insight from reports of specific battles and campaigns that have already been published by the soldiers who were there. For example, Bing West’s book on Fallujah, No True Glory (Random House, 2005), offers insight on the incredible casualties inflicted on the jihadists in that 2004 battle, where one American sniper alone had 100 kills. Iraqi/Baghdad morgue totals, less actual identified civilian deaths, suggest more than 100,000 enemy dead in the last six months, a number consistent with individual battle reports over this time. This was further confirmed by Newsweek’s report last year that the mullahs were running out of males to use as suicide bombers, and they had resorted to using women. Further, the statistics on IEDs, presented earlier in FrontPageMagazine.com, indicate that the terrorists are having to launch more and more attacks with fewer and fewer results. In America’s Victories, I argued that Iraq was a giant “Roach Motel,” in which the terrorists check in, and only leave via the morgue. The real Iraq body count suggest I understated my case by several orders of magnitude. Let me reiterate that no one is looking at the enemy wounded, many of whom will never again fight, or deserters/quitters. As the Japanese found out with their kamikaze pilots, there is a finite number of “warriors” willing to commit suicide. There is also—even for the most fanatical of bushido-ist Japanese and Islamic jihadists—a critical mass in which “fighters” and would-be suicide bombers say “no mas” and quietly abandon the front. The “Roach Motel” strategy, as bloody as it is, works as well for us in Iraq as it worked for Lord Chelmsford when he sent his army into Zululand in 1879 to draw out the Zulus and destroy them. Zarqawi’s last memos testify to the effectiveness of this strategy, as does his corpse. | ||
| Robert Livingston Citizen Username: Rob_livingston Post Number: 2036 Registered: 7-2004  |
Spinal: Can you please post more articles from partisan hacks? Please? Ever hear of links? | ||
| Rastro Citizen Username: Rastro Post Number: 3767 Registered: 5-2004 |
Tap, while I don't often agree with RL, I have to in this case. All your articles lately come from not just non-mainstream sources, but obviously extremely partisan "opinion sources." For a while you were putting insightful posts out. Now you appears to have limited yourself to posting partisan propaganda. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 15377 Registered: 1-2003 |
Spinal Tap, first of all, an attempt to put things in perspective won't work if it spouts stuff about the liberal bias in the press. At least I don't find it convincing. If you have to start your argument with that old saw, you must have little to stand on. Secondly, the article says: if Americans knew what havoc our excellent military is wreaking on these terrorists, support for the war would be substantially higher than it already is Um, no. I don't favor havoc. I favor peace, stability, and prosperity. The more havoc we wreak, the more I oppose the war. Maybe this is the disconnect. We have different goals. Those who favor the war seem to favor havoc and war itself. No wonder they think it's going well. You got what you're looking for: war and havoc, while we hope for the opposite. | ||
| notehead Supporter Username: Notehead Post Number: 3726 Registered: 5-2001 |
Considering the increase in the amount of violence over the past several months, the argument that the other side is gonna run out of bad guys doesn't make sense. | ||
| bettyd Citizen Username: Badjtdso Post Number: 275 Registered: 12-2005 |
What a joke of an article. That is one of the lamest, most intellectually dishonest pieces I have ever seen on the Iraq war. If that is cited by conservatives to illustrate that the war is going well, then they have reached the bottom of the justification barrel. First, who exactly is the enemy we're fighting? And if it's true that a "safe number" of 38,000 to possibly upwards of 120,000 of the enemy have been killed, and 288,000-960,000 wounded, and the insurgency is growing, how many of the enemy are we facing? Sounds like they have a hell of a lot of fighters. Why did Rumsfeld send only 120,000 soldiers there if we are facing over 1,000,000 of the enemy. But rest assured, these "back of the envelope" additions from this clown are undoubtedly accurate. Why would this article say it is "absurd" to state that 44,000 civilians have been killed when Bush himself put the number at 30,000 some time ago? | ||
| Hoops Citizen Username: Hoops Post Number: 1932 Registered: 10-2004 |
Tom Reingold - true. Of course we wreak havoc. We have the most expensive military in the world with the most advanced killing weaponry. The question is whether wreaking that havoc is necessary and justified. The answer all along has been no and no. | ||
| Tom Reingold Supporter Username: Noglider Post Number: 15378 Registered: 1-2003 |
notehead, it's kind of like losing money on every sale but being happy, because you believe you'll make it up with volume. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 175 Registered: 5-2006 |
Honey....I'm home. I posted the Front Page Magazine article because it fits into the subject of this thread. Your responses were predictable. However, I'm more interested in opinions on my post further up thread about Joe Guthrie's column. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 176 Registered: 5-2006 |
And I don't think I post any more links or articles than others and I think I write more than most. Also, I find an alarming number of people on MOL who dismiss articles simply because of the source. People post plenty of stuff here from The Nation and Mother Jones. I read it and if I feel like responding I make an effort to do so intelligently. I don't just write something is crap because it comes from a left wing publication. That's not challenging not to mention boring. | ||
| Spinal Tap Citizen Username: Spinaltap11 Post Number: 177 Registered: 5-2006 |
And yes - many conservatives are guilty of this as well. | ||
| tom Citizen Username: Tom Post Number: 5572 Registered: 5-2001 |
Try writing a paragraph or so in your own words, and quoting a relevant paragraph max. Full length articles have the same effect here as a 10-minute speech would have at a cocktail party. Conversation killer. Too many points get made, a blizzard of topics, and it's impossible to reasonably address them all. | ||
| Illuminated Radish Citizen Username: Umoja Post Number: 54 Registered: 6-2006 |
GOP Man, would you be willing to die along with your entire immediate family if it made life better for most Americans 20 years later? The fact that you aren't horrified that over 1000 people died... that's ridiculous. How many years did you serve in the millitary? Have you ever killed anyone? Clearly you must have, but most of us haven't, and we tended not to join the millitary because we detest needless conflict. I don't see you up in arms that America let a massacre happen in Rwanda. It's not about freedom, that's always a secondary concern. |
